The Fellowship of Those Who Paved the Road – Searcy W.

Dallas, Texas. Searcy came into the fellowship in May of 1946 in Lubbock, Texas At that time there wasn't an AA group between Fort Worth, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona Searcey was instrumental in starting groups all over the Southwest In his travels he got to know Bill and Lois W. quite well In 1953, some friends of Bill's shipped Ebi to Dallas, Texas to try to get him sober. Searcy took Ebi in and worked with him for about 10 years. Remember that Bill Wilson always called Ebi his sponsor, even though he didn't stay sober. I know Searcey has a lot to share with us, so here he is. Please welcome him. good morning or is it evening or what i don't know i'm cersei an alcoholic and uh i know you wouldn't think it by looking at my face but i really am i uh i had the first time in my life i think that i've ever made notes but i made some notes because i always get a telegram from one of my sponsors down san antonio texas and he every week on this day on saturday he gives me the number of days and hours that i've been sober so i got a telegram from him today and he says you have been sober 17 999 days that's one day in nine months and 48 years and and i sure do thank him for telling me how long i've Been Sober because i have to know that i uh like uh bob smith the first in order would for me to do would be to tell you how most grateful i am to this committee and to all of you people who work so damn hard on this thing you did a hell of a job i can tell you let's give him a hand i like the uh betty smith at our old-timers deal in dallas every year does a memorial for those who have gone on and uh and i like to my dearest moments are those times that i think of those people who paved the road, who made it possible for me to be sober today and then to enjoy the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is the most rewarding thing that I do is remember those who helped me. Remember those who paved The Road. Remember those whose had such a hard time. Remember those without the big book, without the 12 steps, without anything to go by. They just stayed sober. and they helped each other stay sober. And I remember a little verse that I used to hear about that. Incidentally, once upon a time we had a guy in the group who hadn't, he and his family or none of them had any background in religion or anything. So the funeral partner when he died called me and wanted to know if I'd hold the funeral. I said, hell, I've never held a funeral in my life. i've been to a lot of them but i don't know anything about well just say try to say something good about this guy if you can so i got up and i said to live in hearts we leave behind is not to die so i put him away uh i i make uh i make what i'm talking about i make three excellent talks three real good talks real good the one i make before i get up here the one I make when I sit down and the one you make for me and I hope tonight you'll make one for me because if you will at this time just add god to help us to talk to each other in the fellowship of the spirit and we'll have a good time and enjoy it and then you won't criticize me because you've been a part of it i uh i'm going to give you a little background on i'm not going to gave you a drunk-a-log because they're not really of much use anymore. We know what the hell's wrong. What are we doing about it, you know? I know what The Problem is. We had a guy recently talk at one of our meetings on speaker meeting night, and he talked two hours and 47 minutes, and he was still in the same bar when the meeting was over. I don't know how he stayed sober, and it doesn't make any difference. He's sober, so that's it. That's it, well i'll give you a little background i was raised out in jones county at west texas and uh to tell you the truth i'm exaggerating a little bit because i was not raised in anson texans i'm sure all you know where anson is i was raising funston i don't my pep squad is not here tonight or we'd hear from them funston texas is the is the six miles east of anson anson is six miles west of holly and auburn is 16 mile west of there now any of these towns you recognize stand up i've raised on a farm out there in the sorry farm i've never seen a good one But there were seven of we kids, and my father and mother were devout, devout missionary Baptists. And that's the worst kind. And I had to go to Sunday school. I had teach Sunday school, and I had sing in the choir. I had go to BYPU. I had do everything that I didn't want to do. And I wasn't mistreated. I was treated very kindly, but we didn't have anything to eat. So that was the only problem raised on that farm. My mother used to say that I was more of a planter than I was a farmer. I planted it and hoped the hell it didn't grow. But we had enough. We had enough to eat, and the grace of God was always at that table. I know my dad, when he said thanks, and he could see out of four eyes at one time. I'd be sitting next to him, and I wouldn't bow my head or be talking or whispering or something. and he'd just slap the hell out of them and I'd just keep on praying, you know. No problem. My father taught me early on that if I took a drink of anything containing alcohol I'd go straight to hell. Just like that. No way. No way And so I started going to hell real quick real quick i as i told you i finally got out of this town of funston the population there was 76 and that included 48 chickens and eight hogs and they were just not that many people there and uh and thank god there weren't because we didn't want to see each other we were we were so poor actually we had a lot of jackrabbits there and i don't know if you have in this country not but we were still poor we'd run alongside those jackrabbits they were fat if they were fast we'd pick them up if not we just let them go you know you don't have to believe that that's all right if you've never had a jackrabbit steak well you've missed it i'll tell they're tough as hell oh boy but we had a good time and and i had two sisters and four brothers and the bottom line is two of them came into aa my younger brother came in in 1949 he stayed over seven years decided some more research work and he went out my older brother came in in december uh in 1946 and stayed over till he died 28 years in the program i i finally left that that farm and went to stanford now stanford i'm getting up in cities now stanford is a real city it's probably 2500 people in the in the whole city and to go to school and I stayed with an old aunt of mine had a boarding house and that was very important to me because if anybody ever needed boarding, I did. And I went to school. Finally, they burned the school down. I got out of there. But the day I finished high school, I had a contract to play semi-pro baseball in the old West Texas League out in Midland, Texas. And I went to Midland happily. I'll tell you, to get off that farm, anything besides that damn farm would shoot me all right. We got to Midlan, and it was a pretty good little league, semi-pro baseball. And I was a pitcher of a sort, not the kind you're thinking about, no Nolan Ryan, I assure you that. But I was the pitcher, and we had to play three games a week on the weekend, but they gave us a job, and I had a job with a motor company, and a good job with the motor company along with playing baseball. So we had some characters playing baseball, one that played with us, one of them named Red Hill, and he was a sorry drinker. We were drinking homebrew in those days. A lot of you young ones don't know what the hell homebREW is, and you don't need to know if you want to tell me. i see a few homebrew faces around it was made out of we it took um uh chops and uh macaroni and cheese whatever i don't know what this and and yeast and water and stuff and and and it made it but didn't make you drunk that's all i know about it it would it would make you forget about the depression and that we were in a deep depression then and i had been for several years on this one but uh it would making we had one red hill couldn't drink i never liked to be around because he drank two or three beers and pass out and he he didn't just barely pass out he was all the way just cold totally yeah and our baseball manager was named doc ellis and he was a good manager but he owned a funeral parlor also that's a hell of a combination a funeral partner and a baseball manager but it did every sunday night we'd gather at doc ellice funeral parter and drink beer and this we had red kept passing out and i said we're sick and tired of that guy just running and the party was passing out every time. So he passed out this night. He had about three beers, and he was totally cold. And so after he passed out, we decided we'd put him in a casket. And we put him in the casket, and we put flowers on him and closed the casquet up. Had his arms crossed. Had him all fixed up. we stepped aside in the other room and listened attentively to see when when and if uh red would wake up and finally he did and and he wakes up and he said we could hear him say if i'm not dead why am i here and if i am dead why have i got to go to the bathroom that's good deep alcoholic thing we've got some deep we got some deep thinkers in this movement you know I have some I have some figures and numbers that are very very important to me before we get on to this. And those numbers are 85, 60 and 48. Now that's not my measurement. I'm 85 years old. I've been married to the same woman 60 years and I've been sober 48 years. That little gray-headed Jewel right there. She deserved to be real white-headed. Putting that with me. well here's the story of how you develop alcoholism drinking homebrew or any whatever it is pertaining to alcohol and you have that x factor in your life which i did evidently i kept adding alcohol to it in all forms homebREW wine gin beer and i could handle a lot of it and take everybody else home i was a dandy you talk about a fine man now i was i was really really nice especially to the women and i took everybody else's home and they thanked me and what an amazing thing to be able to drink as much as you do and handle it i just could not Well, you've got to use your willpower. But I did that for a long while, and things began to change. Things began to changed. Your attitude about drinking changes, and you have some hangovers. And we go to Mexico, and I go down through there with a jug of habanero hanging all over me and one jug inside and one outside. And drunk and still saying, well, this is not bothering anybody. This is my business. I'm not hurting anybody. And I kept adding more alcohol and more alcohol and more and more and more and more and more alcohol and more alcohol to that. Somewhere along the line I crossed into compulsive pathological drinking. That's the only kind of drinking that is a disease the only kind and i crossed that line then i'm drinking for another purpose but this is cunning and baffling because here i am drinking to get away from the effects of drinking i was drinking before because i loved the effects from drinking now i'm trying to drink to getaway from the effect of drinking that doesn't make sense but alcohol as you know is cunning and baffling so it makes you think well i can handle this all right no problem and you keep drinking and drinking more and more andmore so a good thing to do as some of you know i know i've seen some here here's one here from dallas he's uh he's hibernated back down here there's some guys from seattle you see them all over they come they go a place now i took that geographical care i told my wife that well what they accused me i was running with some sorry people can you imagine a drunk running with sorry people but i was accused of that very thing i said well i better get out of here this is a bad society you know what the geographical period. That's an unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. So I took the flight. I went to Corpus Christi, Texas. Laugh. That is the worst place in God's world. If you want a drink, don't ever go down there. They've got the worst jail I've ever seen. No room service no telephone no nothing there's just nothing there except to drink there's nothing to do but drink if you don't drink what the hell do you want to go to corporate for but we went down i talked my wife into coming down there she's a legal secretary so she worked for lawyers thank god along this line if she hadn't been working we'd be out of groceries it's just that simple you know this is a drunkenness is a simple for just like our program it's simple you just drink and you keep drinking and you're an alcoholic you run out of money i know it never happened to some of you but some of us poor ones ran into that problem i did a lot of drinking with a guy named bob skimmerhorn he owned he and his mother owned an oil company in Tulsa Oklahoma and and I used to drink with Bob a lot and like to drink with him because and he liked me for some reason I don't know why but we got along real good but he'd get drunk pass out and I'd steal his money he kept me drunk for 15 or 20 years stealing his money you know well they decided I needed the geographical cure some more I needed to go out get out of corpus and because i had now you talk about losing your self-esteem i went from the credit manager of the packard company and i'd get in that old long packard and go out on the king ranch with 14 million acres out there and i just stay out there and drink all day long and they i had a narrow-minded employer and they wondered where in the hell I was for several months and don't give a man time enough to recuperate to get back on the job and when you've only been out a matter of weeks you ought to have time to recuperation get the feeling better at least So anyhow, I got fired. And I could not get a job, and I find there was a Jewish fellow that had a hamburger joint supply deal. And it was traveling out of the city, and I didn't want anybody to see me driving a damn pickle truck. and that's what i was doing and here's where your luck shot to hell if you keep drinking and you become a compulsive pathological drinker and you're drinking to get away from drinking finally your luck do you ever notice your luck will change nothing to do with drinking your luck is shot you know or mine was shot mine was shocked so my wife could have worked for 1,400 lawyers in Corpus Christi, but the one she worked for represented the Jewish guy that owned the pickle truck that I ran off to Mexico and traded a load of booze versus a load of pickles for booze. Another narrow-minded employer. One more. Well, my brother lived in Dallas, between he and my wife why I got sentenced to leave Corpus Christi I got a request and it was a very firm request either leave or else you know so I left and went to Dallas and I stayed went to work for defense plant in Dallas and I worked there and you know we alcoholics are easy to pick up the things with other people what's wrong with them if you ever noticed that and And the people I worked with in that defense plant, we were building stuff to win World War II. And these guys were sitting on their ass around doing nothing. So I said, let's get out of here. I've got to win this war. So I called them to get my papers to get in the Army. And they scared the hell out of me. They accepted it. And I went in the service for a while. Not wrong. they sent me off to uh up in wyoming and and i was in the not the marine corps that other corps quartermaster corps and uh and i did a lot of drinking after i finished well a man 33 years old trying to do sprints, and a man trying to run 14 miles a day and run over an obstacle course and all that stuff. You run out of air, I'll tell you that, and you run out everything else. See, I just ran out. I just quit. I can't do this anymore, so they made me a carpool and put me Georgia. It was the people out there, and after about almost a year in there, they decided that if they were going to win the war, they better get rid of me, and that's what they did. They got rid of me. I came back to Dallas and got another good job with an electric auto light company, and I had five states and they wanted me to move to Lubbock, Texas and I moved to Lubbbock, Texas and I was drinking more and more and more and I didn't know any solution. I didn' t know what to do but to drink. So after we got to Lubboc, Texas in the summer of 1945 in odessa texas i i had bought a fifth of whiskey and i was headed to the hotel where we were staying because i had to have a drink i was dying and and in front of the hotel i face to face i ran into this guy bob skimmerhorn the sorry drinker and the one that kept me drunk so long with his money and i said bob i'm glad to see you but i need a drink and i've got one let's go get it and i never heard of him turning the drink down they're live never and he said i'll go with you i thought well that sounds a little peculiar ordinarily you say sure how much you got you know or let's get some more we went up and i poured a couple of big glasses and and he pushed his bag and said you take yours you need it And I said, well, what's the matter? You got a venereal disease or something? What the hell, what are you turning the drink down for? Well, I don't understand that. Well, he said, you have a couple and then I want to tell you a little story. So we had a couple and sat there and he said Cersei, you know I've had a drinking problem for years. I said yes, Bob, I knew that. Now you're sorry. Worst drinker I ever saw in my life. But I knew you couldn't help it. But what did you do about it? And I'm not near as bad as you, isn't it? So he said, well, what happened, let me tell you. I would get up at night and drink and drive, and I had a carload of whiskey, and I'd drive and just drink. And in front of the DFW airport, he said I ran into a car load of ladies, and three of them were killed. He said, you know, my mother and I have had lawsuits and problems, and i i just had to do something about my drinking he said i'm into a fellowship called alcoholic synonymous there in dallas and we is about 14 of us and we meet and talk about our drinking problem what we've done and how we can do something abut it and said i have not i have no idea how to drink in 10 months i said all right bob i can't believe i won't buy that no way you could go 10 months without a drink no way well they said I have and let me tell you some more he said you are hopeless and helpless and you can't do anything about it and I have learned how to do something about it and you know how bad I was he said I'm going to send you a book and I want you to read it and this is how I stay sober and i said well bob you be damn sure you sent it to amarillo don't send it to my home my wife would think i got a drinking problem you know i don't i wouldn't want her to think that you know so he sent the big book to amarilla i thumbed through the book a little looked at it but i didn't read it and you know i didn't get sober isn't that amazing you've got all the equipment to stay sober with the rest of your life but you won't read then sometime when you do read it start reading you decide well those lines are wrong i'll really i'll put things in between those lines it'll work a hell lot better it sure does doesn't it so i kept drinking and in november i lost the best job i ever had in november i got fired again a narrow-minded employee once more well what is it to do if you get fired get drunk sure why not so i got drunk in noveember and i stayed drunk drunk drunk every day there was a state legislator in lubbock texas a fine lawyer and he was a drunk and we'd go to his office every day and i start out with a quart of whiskey and we drank that and the next day we do the same thing over and over that and bob had told me that day in odessa in the hotel he said when you go as far as you can go you cannot go one step further and you're unemployed and unemployable and youre hopeless and helpers you call me and i'll try to help you in april from november till april i was drunk every day every day and every night and this morning this particular morning you talk about a moment of clarity it hit me exactly what bob told me exactly when you go as far as you can go then you call me. I went to Dallas, and Bob was out of the city, so I went down, got a bunch of old drunk buddies, and we got drunk and stayed drunk until Saturday, and they took me in an ambulance out to a little drying-up joint out on Maple Avenue, close to where my little group meets now. And the second day out there, they came and said, we're going to take you to AA. Hey, I said, okay, I'll go anywhere. I'd do anything. And we went down to 912 and a half main and we parked in front of a liquor store. And I said oh hell, hey, I believe it's going to be all right. This program may work. But we didn't go in a liquor store. We climbed a stair and went up about 40 steps. and there was a sign in front of it on top of the door it said welcome your home and that's the first time a welcome sign had been turned around where i could read it in a long time long time and that was welcome welcome to know that that i was welcome somewhere i went in there they were slapping each other and tapping somebody told me about the texas how they love and pat and kiss well they were doing that silly silliest thing i ever heard of how could a bunch of drunks love each other the kind i was you couldn't but anyhow one guy burl mcinerney marched me over to the stage he said let me talk to you and he marched me over to where the 12 steps were here on on the wall and he said look if you will make a commitment He said, can you go 24 hours without a drink? I said, oh, I can go. I can't go a week. I can' t go a month. I can''t go two days, but I can do 24 hours. But he said, I want you to start in the morning and make a commitment not to me, not to anything else, but to God. You believe in God. I said oh yeah, I believe in god. I want to make a committment that you will not take a drink and you thank god that night and you do that every day, you will never take another drink. That's the best thing that he ever told me. That's what anybody told me initially in AA, just don't drink today. Then you can work on all these other things that come along. And he said, You've got enough to work on. Don't worry about that. You won't be idle, I'll tell you that. Well, long story short, I went back to Lubbock, and as I said, when I got corrected on that, there was not a group of alcohol synonymous between Fort Worth and Tucson. I'll correct that, Wally. We said Phoenix, but it's Tucson. But there was no—there was not an AA group. So I went back to Lubbock, and with all of my knowledge, you'd think that I could start 15 or 20 groups, you know, right quick. But it wasn't that easy, you Know. And I talked to my pharmacist. the only one that had listened to this crap that I was putting out about this recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous nobody knew anything about it and I talked to this old pharmacy said don't drink, make that commitment, makethat commitment every day and keep doing it and every 30 days because I didn't have a car I'd get on the bus and go to Dallas to a meeting I'd go every 30 day whether I needed the meeting or not I'd just go well i went back to keep going back and i can i can appreciate the loneliness and the feeling that bill wilson and dr bob had in those early days here we don't have 12 step we don'T have a big book we DON'T have we WE'VE GOT WE'VE GOT AN OUTLINE OF THESE THINGS LIKE THE OXFORD MOVEMENT and the Washingtonian movement, all these things ahead. But what happened to them? And why? So you get to looking at what happened to it, and then we know. And how I feel for those people that went before us that had no group. They had no 12 steps. They had No Big Book. And how grateful we should be that we have all those tools today and a way to stay sober is guaranteed if we'll just do it, if we're experienced over 12 steps. It's absolute. I tell them I give them an Oklahoma guarantee on that and that is an Oklahoma warranty is I'm a son of a big fiddle. That's an Oklahoma guarantee. Well we finally started a group in Lubbock in the fall of 1946 And then we had eight or ten, and we had ten or twelve, and fifteen or twenty. And we went to Midland, and then we went up to Odessa, and here. We went all over—we'd drive three hundred miles to start a group. And if two guys would show up, you know, or call in and say, ìWe want to start a group,î no matter where it was, we'd go and we'd start. Most of them were successful. We had a lot of good success for those who wanted to stay sober. Well, in 1946, later on that year, I went to Austin to the state convention of AA, the first one we ever had. And I met Bill Lois. They came down there, and I visited with them. And I loved old Bill from the beginning. And somehow or another, he liked me. I don't know why. I have no idea, no care. I just said he did. And there was something about him that attracted me because of his realism and his definite ability to tell you how to stay sober if you would just do it. And so Lois and Bill, we finally decided early the next year, we went up to New York and visited. And in 1947, Nell Wing had just gone to work in the General Service Office of that. In 1947 we met her and they were kind to us and we'd go up to Stepping Stones and spend a night or two and back from New York and back and forth. And old Bill and I, we just roamed around together and did for many, many years. it meant so much. And I'm just, as Mike Rainbolt said today, a lot of people who were delegates and trustees and very close to the functions of Alcoholics Anonymous, but they didn't have a close relationship with Bill Wilson. Thank God I did. And, and I don't know why God gave me that privilege but but i deeply appreciate it and i'll always be grateful for for that so then in 1947 uh was a was a man with my knowledge and ability i needed to know more about the so-called disease of alcoholism i needed i needed to know because so i can disseminate this information to all the world the whole world you know and if you have the ability wise all you need is the knowledge right so i told i told bill wilson wilson i said i i need to know more and i want to he said well you're so damned and quickly why don't you go to the yale school on alcohol studies and they'll tell you everything from mice to rats and how they stay sober how they drink and so i said all right i'll go and i went and i studied all about rats and mice and dogs and cats and thank god you wouldn't believe it but day and night old dr jelinek and i talked visited and today this guy right here jack h found a book for 50 cents in a garage sale and he brought it as a present tonight can you think of a better i've i'm sure i've wanted one for all these years and i lost mine and it's how it's all about alcohol the title of it is alcohol science and society And I relived all those days that I worked around Dr. Gemini. Anyhow, at that time, I talked to Dr. Gemiini. We had a committee. You know what a committee is. They ride between the camel's back, you know, where the hump is. We got committed together on this situation. and they decided to move the Yale School on Alcohol Studies to TCU at Fort Worth. And in the meantime, we talked, he talked or somebody talked him into it. He hired me to work with Horace Fort and do educational work out of the clinic and we did research and educational work and clinical work. And our job was to educate the general public out there about the disease of alcoholism with these premises that alcoholism is a disease, the alcoholic's a sick person. The alcoholic can be helped and they're worth helping and that alcohol is a community problem, therefore a community responsibility. That was our message. Well, a lot of those little towns out in that barren western country of West Texas and East Texas and all around for that matter, we tried to educate. We had committees, doctors, lawyers, ministers, schools, churches, Anybody that listened, I told them we spread the disease instead of carrying the message, I think. But all those that would listen, we went and we talked. And along the line, old Dr. Jelinek, like Bill Wilson, I don't know why I was among all of those scientists and people. I asked old Dr., he was a banana scientist first. And then he went into alcoholism and directed the Yale School on Alcohol Studies for years and gave us the idea and the reality that alcoholism is a disease. So I asked the old doctor one day, I said, how come you'd acquit bananas and go to alcoholics? Well, he said, alcoholics are just like bananas. They get away from the bunch, they get peeled. The old doctor had a computer mind. We were riding along between Midland and El Paso, which is about 300 miles, and there's not a damn thing between there and there. Nothing. And nothing to say, and the old doctor was riding with his arms folded, he was a short guy. And to make conversation, I said, Bunky, we who finished the school, we're graduates, we're allowed to call him Bunky. I said, Monkey, let me ask you a question. They tell us that 0.15 you're drunk of alcohol blood concentration. He said, That's right. So we rode on a little further and I said let me ask you questions. He said go ahead. If you had an elephant that weighed 16 tons and nine pounds how much booze would it take to get his blood concentration up to 0.15 he didn't answer me he just rode along we rode along another hundred miles and all at once he said 19 gallons and four ounces i said what the hell are you talking about he said he said when you asked me a question i said yeah that's a hundred miles back up the road i didn't know what bulky got sick in 1950 and retired and they did away with school but in the meantime he said Searcy, we have to have some way for the alcoholic to go into a hospital and get sober with some dignity as a diseased condition. And there's none in Texas. So he said, let's start some clinics where now a drunk can go in and get some good medical treatment and go into AA directly and get out and stay sober so we started one in lubbock we started one in dallas we started on houston and we started one called bad new mexico now you know i'm nuts and in those clinics they they and at that a.a was new remind you and and people have they had no place to go you couldn't go in a hospital as an alcoholic or as a drunk no way You could go in there with liver or syphilis or anything else but not an alcoholic. Well, we changed that, and we ran 15,000 people through those four clinics in a matter of about four years, and 75% of them that went into AA directly stayed sober. Does it work? You're damn right it works. If you go into AA, the program of alcoholics and arts works, And we proved it in those people that recovered. So then in 1948, Bill Wilson came to Texas to talk. We had about 100 members of AA from all over the state gathered in Lubbock. They wanted to see how old Bill's wings flopped, you know. They knew he was an angel, but they didn't know how his wings would flop. and they all came to see him as a committee I went to Amarillo and met he and Lois and we got back on the plane and driving along he reached in his pocket and pulled out some handwritten notes and handed them to me and said read these and see what you think about I read them and handed em back and I said well this is alright for you Yankees but we don't need it down here how we love each other oh we don't have any trouble we'll never have what it was was a 12 tradition aren't you glad i didn't have a damn thing putting this together no we don'T need it you DON'T need the very thing that saved our lives the very thing that's saved alcoholics anonymous was in is in our 12 traditions and i couldn't see it didn't know it so bill came on down there and talked to repeat we had a very very enlightening meeting and somehow of why we needed the 12 tradition and then in in 19 1953 well in 1950 let me go back there at the International conference in cleveland we went up there and um and i visited with bill quite a while and he said i want you and dr bob and i to get together and i know you've changed my attitude about the traditions that we really needed them and he had me out there electioneering around and there's 20 000 people in the auditorium there get get out the vote to pass the tradition we got to get them And Bill and Dr. Bob both feared that they might have some dissenting problems with it. Well, there was all of our wee old guys out there electioneering with people and everybody you knew tried to get them, let's vote, be sure and vote for the 12th edition. Dr. Rob and Bill and I met up in the room for about an hour and a half and talked. That was the only time I got to visit with Dr. Robert. i've always regretted that i was very close to bill all those years and until he died but i never got to know dr bob except that day in there and the things that he told me and that they discussed there made me know that forever and forever if we will follow their suggestions and what they found out and what they knew that we'll never perish. We'll have everlasting life in this fellowship, ever, forever. And they made me know that it's and they were so right that we needed these things to gird AA and to make sure that those coming behind us have a way out like we did. And no matter how rough our time was in alcoholism, here is a way that we could stay sober. So in 1953, Bill—one of the many visits to Texas we were visiting in the Melrose Hotel there in Dallas—and I asked Bill, I said, Bill, AA's been around now eleven years, twelve years. What would you rather see happen now than has ever happened in Alcoholics Anonymous? And immediately he said, I'd rather see Ebby have a chance to get sober now abby went to bill on his 39th visit to town's hospital abby and old school mate you know bill came in and bill said what's this religion you've got well he said it's not religion really it's uh he was in the oxford movement and he told him about it and especially about the god part of it and about the higher power that and and the absolutes thank god we have those absolutes to go but to still guide us in our program of alcoholics and arms but anyhow abby told bill that the reason he was sober is because he had quit drinking first and started making restitution and to try to live by these four absolutes and bill said well that may be all right for old ebby but not for me but the not wrong after then bill goes back in town's hospital and ebbey in the meantime goes back to the bowery and drinking so on bill's 40th visit in comes the doctor and he said bill you're hopeless and helpless and nothing short of a spiritual experience will save you and bill thought about that and that night he got on his knees and said if a big question if there is a god show himself to me and he did you know his story in there when he got up off the bed and right the white lightning and all those things happened that burning bush or whatever it was but anyhow he had it and thank god he did and he never took another drink well abby's down on the bowery after then although he'd taken a to Bill, and Bill always from then on said Ebby was his sponsor because he gave him how to first get sober and what to do. Although he didn't have the outline of the 12 Steps, they had to work that out later, of course. But anyhow, when Bill said he wanted Ebby to have a chance to get sober we immediately got in touch with New York. We had a guy up there uh charlie milton that knew the rope down on the bowery and after a while he found abby down there and was a promise of a pint of liquor to get on the plane to come to dallas to the clinic sober up while they got him on there and when he got to d Dallas old abby had been drunk all these years 13 years he got out and here's a big signboard out it says american airlines to new york we're driving on abby said hell do you see i'm still in new yark you think he wasn't screwed up well abby stayed in the clinic there oh a month before he quit hallucinating he cussed me out every morning every morning he said you dirty sob and he's cussing dr bob bill and everybody else and he said if you don't stop that music coming out of the air conditioner i'm gonna leave here i whispered in the nursery there i said get that sob a ticket right now he's gone and and i did tell her i said we promised abby that if he'd come and go in the clinic sober up he'd have a round trip ticket he could go back to new york if he wanted to and i was ready for him to go back if you want to know but the grace of god i told her to get abby ready to go back and in less than a week i was gone to another clinic and came back she said you know abby is better and i said better for what he said he's he's uh he's showing some improvement i said i want to see that that'll be a miracle and so finally one day abby walked over my and instead of cussing me out he said where are you going i said I'm going over to the club he said what club i said hell you know what club I'm gonna go to every day we said can I go with you we went to the club, he stayed all afternoon. He came back, he went the next day. In about a week, he said, where are you going? I said, I'm going to Lubbock. We're going out there to convention and speak. Could I go with you? Sure. And he went, and he got up and said a few words. He said, Edby, I need help, and I'm trying to get sober. So to make a long story, Edmy got sober and stayed sober three and a half years that time. And that summer, the next summer, he went out on the ranch in West Texas and worked on that ranch. Can you imagine a New York cowboy? You'd never seen a cow or a horse either one. But he's out there riding. Well, he came back and there had been an RN nurse work for me and she had gotten addicted to some kind of prescription drugs and finally got bedridden. So Ebby nursed her for two-and-a-half years, she was bedriden totally, and he nursed her two- and-a half years and she died and he got drunk. He stayed sober another three-and a half years, four-and a half year one time and several times and we were closely related during all those years But finally, in 1960, two or three, Bill gave him a place to stay, Upper State New York, a lady up there that she loved old Abby too. And he went up there and she nursed him and petted him, took him to places. And he's sober two and a half years when he died. That's what Bill meant when he said passion on. Isn't it? So we never know how those things happen. But by the grace of God, somebody was helped. And that was Ebi who was really Bill's sponsor. Then in 1960, Ebi and I went to Davenport, Iowa to a tri-state conference out there, and we both spoke. And Ebi talked for about 30 or 40 minutes there. She's got their tape people here had a recording of it in there. And Evi told his story of what happened and how he had regained his faith in God and the higher power and how He was staying sober. A marvelous story. Although he had some cantankerous ideas about people and all, he was a good guy and really the miracle of the changes wrought and the touch of the Master's hand came to Abbey and he stayed sober those years. So if you're not as close to God as you once were, make no mistake about who's moved. And if you never worked close to God, make no mistakes about who should move. Hiya. Betty, if you don't mind, here's some things that touched my heart, she sent it to me Sam Shoemaker along with Dr. Bob and Bill were most instrumental in a lot of these spiritual things that are in our program Betty sent me this just a while back this is Sam Shoemer as I sit in the study on a beautiful cool August afternoon I look back with many thanks this is just before he died it has been a great run i wouldn't have missed it for anything much could and should have been better and i have by no means done what i should have done with all that i've been given but the overall experience of being alive has been an thrilling experience i believe that death is a doorway to more of it cleaner cleaner better with more of the secret open than than than look than luck i do not feel much confidence in myself in regard to all this for very few have ever deserved eternal life but with god's atonement and him gone on before i have another number doubt nor fear i have neither doubt nor feel whether i am left here a brief time or a long time i believe that i shall see him and know him and that eternity will be an endless opportunity consort with the great souls and the lesser ones who have entered into freedom of the heavenly city in his forgiveness and grace that give confidence and not merit of our own but again i say it's been a great run i'm thankful for it and for all the people who have helped to make it so and especially those closest and dearest and that he had probably more to do with the spiritual part of our program and working with bill and bill and dr bob had the utmost confidence in him and his beliefs and the things that i visited was bill and lois one time at the international conference in long beach in 1960 and sister ignatia and bill we all sat down and had dinner together for seven hours and along with sam shoemakers help in establishing these things spiritually sister ignatia was very influential and and how grateful we ought to be to those people who contributed to such a such a thing that saved our lives So it was a moment that—I've been to every one of our international conferences, and I remember the one where we tried to get the—in 1950 we tried to get to 12 Traditions in St. Louis in 1955, the things we did there, and on down. All of them have been an experience of what has happened and why these things have happened. So I'll take you back to Stamford. I know you'd love to be there. It's a city. It's not by the sea. It's by a little creek out there, a very small creek. But in this city of Stamord, I knew a guy named Stuart Hamblin. We finished high school together. And Stuart wrote a lot of spiritual songs. And old Bob, Betty, and I with that little eagle, we get together to sing this. And I hope I can remember the words to it, but I told him I thought he wrote it for Alcoholics Anonymous. And he incidentally came into AA two years before he died, but he had written this song long before. And it goes something like, The chimes of time ring out the news another day is true. someone slipped and fell was that someone you you may have longed for added strength your courage to renew do not be disheartened because i've got news for you it is no secret what god can do what he's done for others he'll do for you with arms wide open he'll pardon you it is no night for in his light you'll never walk alone you'll always feel at home wherever you may roam there is no power can conquer you while god is on your side just take him at his promise don't run away and hide it is no secret what god can do i love that song and i think about i sing it all the time and and i'm afraid some of you might think i was going to sing it and leave I've got a little, I know there are spiritual people here. I know you've heard the 23rd Psalm a lot. How many of you have read the 23th Psalm? Well, I wrote a different one. This is the 23... this is the 23rd and a half the lord is my sponsor i shall not want he makes me to go to many meetings he leads me to sit back relax and listen with an open mind he restores my soul my sanity and my health he leads me in the paths of sobriety, serenity and the fellowship for mine own sake he teaches me to think, to take it easy to live and let live and to do first things first he maketh me honest, humble and grateful he teaches be to accept things I cannot change change the things that I can the wilderness knows the difference yea though I walk through the valley of despair frustration guilt and remorse i will fear no evil for thou art with me the program thy way of life the 12 steps they comfort me thou prepares the table before me in the presence of mine enemies retaliation fear anxiety self-pity and resentment thou anointest my confused mind and jangled nerves with knowledge understanding and hope no longer am i alone neither am i afraid nor sick nor helpless nor hopeless my cup runneth over surely sobriety and serenity shall follow me every day of my life 24 hours a day at a time and as i surrender my will to thine and to carry the message to others i will dwell in the house of my higher power as i understand him daily forever and ever you know isn't it strange that old timers are so long-winded it's amazing isn't well i know one sheet's getting tired and the other so just change them with i told uh i told somebody there about old clarence snyder we were in amarillo texas not too long ago well it's been a long time ago too several years and uh old clarens talked and and and it was the podium was no bigger than one of these tables and the podium and a cane bottom chair was all that I was introducing Clarence. And two hours and 45 minutes later, ClarenCE and me left that cane-bottom chair there. He talked that long, and I sat there. I wore out the chair and my rear end and the whole business, you know. So these things that we experience in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I don't—you know, really, you could read how it works and sit down, and that's it. That's it, and you can go on and on and all these added things that we do, and then we cherish them. I go, about three years or four years ago, we have a place called Intervention out of Dallas. And the Dallas Judicial District, the judges or the courts send drunks and people with drug problems out there for a period of six months. And there are no bars. They have some counselors out there and some sorry ones too. and uh and they have some good ones but those guys that every saturday i go out there at 1 30 and we have a discussion meeting we have about 400 and we we team them up 50 and at a time and we talk and after after the new ones come in and after a couple of weeks or maybe three weeks they start talking about a higher power and they start talking about staying sober and every single one of them will talk and before they get out of there they're making a commitment to stay sober on a daily basis and 75% of them are staying sober when they go out of that they come to a group, they get a sponsor they do the things they're supposed to so in closing we could say a thousand things and how grateful margaret and i are and i i know all you we're so grateful for what you do to help us to stay sober you know spirituality is the reflection of godliness in the channels of human living and and we've been given all those 12 promises in our lives there's not anything in those 12 promises that we have not realized because we have been in alcoholics anonymous so i'm not going to read that or not going but but it says this in our book abandon yourselves to god as you understand god clear away the wreckage of the past and in my mind there is no doubt that all of us, all of us, somewhere, sometime, someway we'll meet again. Thank you and God bless you. Thank you.